Lolita An Analysis of the Repulsive in Nabokov's Lolita

This paper will show why Vladimir Nabokov chose to illustrate a theme that is considered by many to be repulsive: it was a theme through which he could hold the mirror up to society and reflect what he saw happening in the world around him. When Nabokov's Lolita debuted first in Paris and then in America in the 1950s, it provoked one of two reactions (aside from the compulsion to buy -- its first American paperback printing sold out): it provoked either condemnation or disinterest. Graham Greene was the first high-profile author to recommend the novel, but his recommendation did not deter his home country (Britain) from banning the book. It appeared that what the Russian-born Nabokov had set out to do, "to disturb the cultural purity of easily-shocked America," ("Fracturing the Pawn") had in one sense been successful: the easily-shocked were shocked; they just did not happen to be in America.

In fact, in America, the novel would be adapted to the big screen not once but twice -- first by Stanley Kubrick in 1962 and then by Adrian Lyne thirty years later. The term "Lolita" itself would work its way into pop culture and come to identify young girls of a certain innocent/seductive nature, the idealized embodiment of which would be such young pop stars as Britney, Christina, Beyonce (and the list grows every year). Like all stories of corruption in the American media, the response was one of both captivation and repulsion. Just as the crime films of the early 20th century had "condemned and glorified the brutality of the underworld" (Mast 270), Lolita was remarked for having done a similar job on pedophilia. Yet, such a claim misses the mark: as Nabokov himself states, his purpose was to explore a theme that was taboo (Nabokov 314). American audiences were Protestant, Puritanical, and prurient -- and the combination was (and is) an intriguing one. Just as in the days of Prohibition, when Americans were supposed to be dry and virtuous, the iconoclastic 50s were the decade of Marilyn Monroe, pin-up queens,...

What made Nabokov stand out, however, was the fact that many Americans identify (perhaps unconsciously) with the predator Humbert, casting Lolita in the role not of victim of but of seducer: "Lolita is often figured in the popular imagination as a temptress" (Jost, Olmsted 326). Nabokov's estimation of the female lead was, however, quite different:
After the first sexual encounter -- in which, by Humbert's own testimony, Lolita completely misunderstands what is at stake -- she never expresses anything but repulsion for her victimizer. She spends years trying to figure out how to escape from him, and it is no doubt for her resourcefulness and bravery that Nabokov held her in such high regard: according to Brian Boyd, Nabokov once said that 'of all the thousands of characters in his work…Lolita came second in his list of those he admired most as people…When I think of her, I always hear her uttering her archetypal cry, 'Oh no, not again.' (Jost, Olmstead 326)

As David Allen White states, "Great art holds the mirror up to nature" ("Shakespeare and the Modern World"). What Nabokov does with Lolita is hold the mirror up to a culture that is as obsessed with seeming prudish as it is with consuming that which is pornographic. It was not the theme that disturbed Americans -- it was the fact that it touched a nerve: Humbert was America.

The notion should be disconcerting, and that is perhaps one reason why the novel "continues to produce outcries" as Pekka Tammi reports (221). But it should be taken seriously nonetheless: as Eric Goldman writes, "Lolita is presented through the eyes of a pedophile who sees her…